Monthly Archives: February 2008

Since I’ve been in Israel my view on life has changed. Money doesn’t have such a big impact on my life anymore and I think I’ll fine for money throughout my life. I’m going to a good university to study maths and I don’t desperately need the money from poker.

Who is richer? The man that has 10 million pounds and desires 100 million, or the man that has 100 thousand pounds and desires nothing?

I didn’t quit because I didn’t think I was good enough to make it big or because I was afraid of losing the money. I quit because of religious reasons.

Judaism doesn’t say that gambling is outright forbidden, but it is seen as:

a waste of time,

a job that is unconstructive and perhaps even a bit destructive,

and seen as slightly immoral.

It is seen as immoral because you are sort of stealing. The other person doesn’t want to lose the money and when you take from him with your better skill, in effect you are stealing. I know a hige amount of luck is involved in poker, but at the end of the day when you play 300,000 hands – it is purely a game of skill as I have written in other posts.

Furthermore, the aim in poker is too find the fish, to make as much money as you can as easily as possible, in effect conning or stealing from people.

After a lot of thought I decided to quit online poker. I still love the game and still love the big players. I’ll continue to watch High Stakes Poker on TV, but will unfortunately never be playing with them.

I may still play in house games where only 10 pounds is on the line, but probably not.

BTW – Judaism doesn’t try and enforce it’s law on other people. The only laws non-Jews are expected to keep are the 7 laws of Noah.

Poker may fall under the category of stealing. Hopefully I’ll write a more detailed post on why I quit some day.